TOKYO -- Once touted as a lion king who could rejuvenate his long-ruling party, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi seems instead to have proved an adage about another political species -- leopards can't change their spots.

Just over a year after Koizumi leapt to power on a surge of popular backing for his reform agenda, hopes have nearly vanished that his party can free itself from vested interests blocking reform or appeal to a broader base of voters who favor change.

While Koizumi may well linger on as a lame duck for months to come, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) he leads looks bent on a longer-term process of slow and painful self-destruction.

"The LDP has to fall apart," said Columbia University Professor Gerald Curtis, a veteran follower of Japanese politics.

"The social foundation that supports the political system has collapsed. Politics has not caught up, but it has to catch up sometime," Curtis said.

"Maybe it will just be a very, very slow death." In the meantime, few pundits expect much progress on the reforms needed to set Japan's economy back on track for sustainable growth -- whether tax reform, deregulation, or a clean-up of banks plagued by bad loans and weak management.

In the latest act of the soap opera that Japanese politics has become, the LDP on Thursday suspended the membership of popular former foreign minister Makiko Tanaka for two years, effectively expelling the outspoken lawmaker from the party.

The punishment was imposed after Tanaka refused to cooperate with a party probe into allegations she misused tax money meant to pay an aide and refused to support an LDP candidate in a by-election.

Support from Tanaka, the daughter of late LDP kingmaker Kakuei Tanaka and popular for her harsh attacks on the party's old guard, played a key role in Koizumi's rise to power.

But she soon became a thorn in Koizumi's side and in January he fired her as foreign minister to end her disruptive battles with diplomats and LDP powerbroker Muneo Suzuki.

The sacking, seen by critics as Koizumi caving in to anti-reform forces, backfired and triggered a steep slide in his sky-high support as Suzuki himself became mired in a scandal that led to his arrest on Wednesday for alleged bribe-taking.

--- What Happens Next? --- The usually outspoken Tanaka has been remarkably silent since her punishment was meted out, and domestic media on Friday offered her little sympathy, calling on her to clear up the scandal allegations while lamenting the money politics that has plagued the LDP for most of its nearly half-century in power.

But analysts said Tanaka's next move as well as those of other key players within and outside the LDP would bear close watching for signs of plotting to launch a new party that might attract defectors from both the LDP and the opposition.

Foremost among those on the political radar is nationalist Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who has long been thought to have his eye on replacing Koizumi if and when he loses his grip.

"Every resignation, every degree of slowdown in the reform process leads toward fragmentation and plays into the hands of Ishihara," said one Western political analyst.

-------------------------------------------------- -------------- also under close scrutiny is ichiro ozawa, a one-time ldp heavyweight who left the party in 1993 and now heads a small, hawkish group known as the liberal party.

ozawa has been cosying up to some in the biggest opposition group, the democrats, while ishihara is thought to be cultivating his connections with the most conservative wing of the ldp.

ldp rivals to koizumi, meanwhile, are jockeying to be in line to replace him, though none are expected to be able to generate the sort of popularity that helped the prime minister lead the party to victory in an upper house election last july.

with no general election mandated until mid-2004, analysts said the most likely scenario was that koizumi would hang on, increasingly a captive of the old guard he had vowed to break.

"koizumi doesn't have the energy to destroy the ldp old guard but they have no one with whom to replace him," said muneyuki shindo, a political science professor at rikkyo university.

"i think things will muddle along at least until the ldp presidential election in september 2003." endangered species over the longer term, though, the ldp itself could well be headed for extinction, at least in its present incarnation.

cracks have widened in the party's once unbeatable base of big business, farmers and shopkeepers while its vote-getting machine powered by lobby groups such as doctors, contractors and postal workers has rusted.

urban, middle-class, "floating voters" had shunned the ldp in droves and even some rural voters were inclined to snub the party until koizumi lured them back.

now expectations that koizumi could remake the party into one that could appeal to a modern constituency appear ill-founded.

"the ldp political base is a kind of feudal voting system of local networks that are very dense and well-established and difficult to change," the western analyst said.

"things will change, but you are looking at decades rather than one year.

whither japan in the meantime? "the prospect is that, for some years, japan will stagger on, poorly served by its political structure," the analyst said. "the reform process is grinding to a halt."